r/learnjavascript • u/Hortaly • 5d ago

Year into web dev, JavaScript still feels weak. What got you from basic to confident?

I've done web dev for about a year but my JavaScript is still weak. What projects or resources helped you get from basic to confident?"

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u/Puzzleheaded-Comb646 5d ago

Building small utilities from scratch really helped me and my students bridge that gap. Try coding things like a basic calculator, a todo app with local storage, or even a simple quiz game without tutorials. When you have to figure out the logic for handling button clicks and arrays yourself, it starts to stick much better than just following along.

2

u/naltous 5d ago

one thing about the calculator specifically, it gets surprisingly tricky once you handle chained operations and operator precedence. most people dont expect that

1

u/Puzzleheaded-Comb646 4d ago

You are completely right! I always see my students surprised by this, because a calculator looks simple on the surface but hides deep logic. Tackling those edge cases and operator orders is honestly where your problem-solving really starts to click.

2

u/unholy-web-worker 4d ago

20+ years into web dev, JavaScript still feels weak. I don't know.

2

u/TheRNGuy 4d ago

Make useful userscripts for sites that you use, or even some browser extension (some things are impossible to do with userscripts)

1

u/SafeWing2595 4d ago

Same here mate, year and a half into web dev and JavaScript still feels weak, even though i was always trying to build a bench of projects

1

u/Upbeat-Avocado-683 2d ago

I am only starting with HTML again, building my resume because it's something I feel I can use, and that's what makes it stick,

I hope I get good at it this time

1

u/RomirBuilds 2d ago

If you've already built the button/array projects suggested here, try adding failure cases to one project that fetches data. Give it a visible loading state, a successful result, an empty result, and an error with a retry button. Then deliberately test a bad URL and an offline browser.

One useful gotcha to work through: fetch doesn't reject just because the server returned 404, so check response.ok yourself. MDN's example shows that check alongside try/catch: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Fetch_API/Using_Fetch

Before coding, write down what the user should see in each case. Being able to explain and debug those transitions gives you a concrete way to assess what you understand and what needs more practice.

AI-assisted.